Being able to identify who is included on a phone call is a desirable way of determining information pertaining to those individuals participating in the call. For example, caller identification (ID) allows a person receiving a phone call to determine who they will be in communication with if the call is answered. However, as the number of individuals participating on a given phone call increases, it becomes harder to identify and distinguish between call participants. For example, existing products are unable to identify who is speaking or even included on a teleconference for a meeting, seminar, etc. having multiple participants. This is particularly apparent when more than one teleconference participant is located at a given location, e.g., using the same teleconference interface.
Existing solutions to such shortcomings require call participants to ask for the identification of other call participants and their personal information for context. However, this is inefficient as it requires time that would otherwise be spent conducting the teleconference and interrupts the flow of discussion.
Similar issues are apparent for call locations, such as phone service centers, which receive calls from various different people. Again, the existing solution is for the representative at the call location to ask for some kind of personal information which can assist the representative in looking up additional information which uniquely identifies the caller. However, the time required to request, receive and look-up the information can require a substantial amount of time which results in inefficiencies.
Previous attempts to overcome these issues used audio level outputs to determine which microphone connected to a call corresponds to the voice currently being heard. However, such attempts are still unable to distinguish between different people using the same interface. Accordingly, call participants must still revert to asking for the identification of other call participants and their personal information for context.